


Men Out of Time (The Cinderella Story Remix)

by navaan



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Noir
Genre: Illnesses, Inspired by Fanart, M/M, Remix, Romance, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 20:04:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9920174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: Steve is a comic book artist in today's New York who has a fondness for the Tony Stark adventures





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ranoutofrun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ranoutofrun/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Before the clock strikes 12](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8905366) by [ranoutofrun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ranoutofrun/pseuds/ranoutofrun). 
  * In response to a prompt by [ranoutofrun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ranoutofrun/pseuds/ranoutofrun) in the [Cap_Ironman_Remix_Madness_2017](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Cap_Ironman_Remix_Madness_2017) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> All current works I have are art. 
> 
> And a warning that in some works there are more than 1 artwork per chapter as there are multiple artworks, just so people don't miss them all.
> 
> 1\. My works are here under Ranoutofrun https://archiveofourown.org/users/ranoutofrun/works?fandom_id=7266
> 
> 2\. All but 2 are of earth 616, the other being Marvel Noir. There is 1 other artwork that is a crossover between 616 Tony and Steve and Secret wars Battleworld: Civil War. All of them are marked accordingly. 
> 
> 3\. I currently have no Remixes, WIP or safe works.

The graveyard was empty and Steve slowly walked over to lay down his flowers. He'd been coming here since he'd found out that this was where Tony Stark had been buried. His hero. Steve had been a few years too late to meet him in person, but he still drew strength from the fact that the hero of his favorite adventure stories had been a real person, although he'd lived in seclusion after the war.

He coughed.

Pain. His chest hurt like it was on fire. 

He did not need to ask anyone to know that his lungs were slowly giving out on him. His whole body was.

He'd been fighting it all his life.

He was 22 now and dying.

There was nothing much that could be done for him now. The doctors were giving him months, maybe. He would try to make the best of it.

* * *

His mother had always told him he was stubborn like her, a fighter. And most of his life had been a fight for him. To her too, until she'd passed away, afraid what would become of her frail little boy without his mother.

He sketched for as long as the light in the room was good – his mother, the tree across the street, Tony Stark defeating the Modok monstrosity in the caves of Andar. He had comic pages to draw he was actually being paid for, but tonight he didn't feel like working. He had been trying to pitch a Tony Stark reboot comic for more than a year, but none of the publishers had bitten. Steve was still writing and drawing it all by himself, because this was the one project he wanted to hold on to, and he wasn't giving up hope that someone would pick it up. He had never been able to go on any real adventures, but at least he could dream about them. 

 

He picked up the recent Nostalgia Reprint of _Tony Stark and the Rise of Iron Man_ from his shelf. It had the original pulp cover and he liked that one so much better than the ones they'd slacked on the 70s trade paperback reissues that had all featured a bulky male hero with shortly cropped army haircut and a soulless face. It had appealed to the image of masculinity of post-war America, but Steve had always preferred the version of Stark that looked more like a real man, strong but not big or bulky and so much more like the photos that remained of the real life adventurer. 

He had read this one a thousand times already. 

But he liked reading about Tony's first brush with Hydra.

It made the coughs and the pain and the fatigue matter less.

* * *

On Thursday he carried his Tony Stark comics to the publishers at Timely. They at least had expressed an interest and Steve was excited to be given a chance to show what he had.

He never made it there.

A coughing fit distracted him. The blood on the envelop that held the pages distressing him, he didn't notice the car or indeed that it was out of control as he tried to cross the bridge in a hurry.

Then he had no time to jump to the side, pushed to the windshield, no air in his lungs before he was falling, he went down, down, down and hit icy cold water.

* * *

Death was different than he imagined.

Colder.

There was sound.

Perhaps he wasn't dead after all.

Confused he tried to open his eyes. 

He'd woken up in hospital beds countless times, but this was scary.

It was dark. He was confined. A mask was pressed over his face and he could breathe, but he had barely any room left in this coffin. He touched the cold surface and suddenly reeled back, panting in fear as a hand was pressed against the glass from the outside. 

He heard the movements of hydraulic releases. Panic gripped him. The coffin turned into an open metal box. He was strapped in.

But the instant he could recognize the man who was on the other side of the metal wall, he froze all over again.

“Hello there,” the man said and his voice was everything Steve had ever imagined it would be, deep and sweet like honey and with the the slightest hint of danger. He'd been in love with the idea of Tony Stark for so long that he didn't even need to fall in love again. He simply was in love. “I'm glad you woke up. We found you bleeding out among the men out there and... I'm sorry. There wasn't much we could do, so... We...” 

Another man stepped forward to shine a light in his eyes. 

Stark took off the mask that helped him breathe and helped unstrap Steve who was so busy staring at him that it took him close to a minute to realize that his arms had thickened, that his chest was rising and falling without any pain, that his hands were strong enough to take the bonds if he wanted out. 

“Hello, soldier,” Tony said again, amused by his staring.

“You're Tony Stark!” he blurted out.

The man's grin widened. “Yes,” he said. “And you are America's first super soldier. Sorry.”

Steve stared. At Tony, at his hands, his body, at Tony again, at the equipment in the room, the posters, the calendar on the wall, at Tony again. 

He must really have died. Because this couldn't be happening outside of comic books and pulp adventures.

* * *

He waited for the dream to end.

Tony helped him settle in, talked to him even when he spaced off, overwhelmed. Sometimes he looked at him strangely when Steve seemed to know too much about tech that hadn't even been invented yet, about things that hadn't happened yet.

On his first day, Steve saved a platoon because he'd read about the battle and knew what to do.

He got assigned a uniform the next day that had the colors of the flag. It was so pulpy and strange that he didn't even think to protest. His mind still had too much to do with catching up with this body, that could push weights without tiring and run faster than a car. Tony Stark seemed amused by all of it.

“They are starting to call you Captain America,” he revealed after Steve's second week in camp.

He still got stricken with awe every time Tony got close to him, every time he sauntered over to talk. They did not see much of each other, but Tony was always close by when he wasn't on a mission.

“What are you up to?” Steve asked. He knew the year, knew what adventures lay ahead and he wanted in. And Stark had just started to gather equipment. Pepper and Jim Rhodey were waiting with their own equipment. Something was going to happen.

“Why, Captain America, I thought you'd never ask,” Stark said cheerily.

* * *

Their first kiss happened under enemy fire. Steve just leaned forward to press their lips together. He had nothing to lose whatever this time or Tony had to say about his attraction to another man. He was dead already, had been dying all his life. It taught you to take your moments as they came.

He was a dead body dreaming of pulp adventures.

But Tony grasped the back of his head and suddenly they were kissing, tongue to tongue, with abandon and passion - a desperate embrace in the mud of a battle field.

Like a scene right out of a pulpy romance.

* * *

They had sex at the first safe house - Steve riding Tony's cock until both of them came apart screaming – and then again when they moved to another location – this time Steve used his strength to rip Tony's shirt off him to the man's amusement.

Now they were in bed together, touching, stroking, soft and safe. Steve wanted it to never stop.

“I don't want to wake up,” he whispered against Tony's chest, right next to the mechanical heart. “I want to stay with you forever.”

“Then do,” Tony said. “And when you're ready tell me all your secrets I want to hear them.”

* * *

Their relationship consisted of explosions and battles and stolen moments. They held hands when they were sitting in a dark theater in France watching a terrible movie and none of the people around them even suspected who they were. They kissed when nobody could see them and at night they keep each other warm when nobody else could.

Steve began opening up, dropped hints here and there. He sketched New York as he remembered it and didn't bother to hide it from Tony.

In bed, when they were alone for a rare moment of downtime in a hotel in London, he whispered: “I was born in 1995. I think I'm dead. Killed in a car accident. Or drowned. I'm not clear about that. I just know I was there and then I was here.”

Tony held him, stroked his hair, let him explain. “That is not the most outrageous thing I ever heard,” he said simply after Steve had finessed. And just like that, he took Steve's story at face-value.

* * *

The carrier exploded, the Hydra weapon neutralized. Iron Man had not come on this mission. Tony was on the other side of the continent and yet again he was the last thing on Steve's mind when he fell, and fell and fell, crashing hard into the icy cold waters of the arctic.

* * *

He woke up in hospital.

It was the right year, the right time, but Steve Rogers was no longer dying although a car accident should have killed him - or at the very least he should have drowned in the river after he'd been pushed off the bridge unconscious.

“We can't explain it. You should have drowned and with your medical conditions... Mr. Rogers, you're a scientific miracle. You're healthy and fine. Better maybe.”

He smiled wanly. They wouldn't understand. He was alive. He had a whole life to look forward to, but he had lost everything. A whole life built and lived in the dreams of a dying man.

He picked up flowers right outside the hospital and went out to the graveyard to leave them on Tony's grave again, like he'd done so many times before. Right now he did not even have tears to cry.

At the graveyard a woman stepped up to him, a beautiful red head like Pepper. She looked at the grave and then at him and whispered with the hint of a Russian accent: “Don't look so sad, Captain.” She pushed an envelope into his hands.

A scribbled note said: “Come to 890 Fifth Avenue. The is something you need to see.” It was Tony's handwriting. He'd seen it countless times before. Not asking any questions, he followed the woman to her car, allowed her to take him, overwhelmed and sad. He stared at the streets of New York like he was a ghost who'd never walked these streets.

They entered the mansion in Manhattan together.

“I brought him!”

“Thank you, Natasha,” a voice he would never forget spoke and he saw Tony standing at the end of the stairs. 

Steve stood frozen, not able to grasp any of this. 

“I had a feeling you'd woken up,” he said and held up a glass in a toasting motion. 

“How?” Steve's voice was wavering. 

“You gave me a hint,” Tony said. “Inventing time travel wasn't that hard when you know what'll be possible.” He grinned. “There's nobody in that grave, by the way. I thought there was no fun in growing old without you.”

Then Steve melted, wrapped him in his arms. They kissed.

Suddenly they had forever to explore.

And he'd still not woken up from this dream.

He hoped he never would.


End file.
